CENTRANCE MicPort Pro - CE1801

Hi all--I'd spent some time surfing around for a highly portable two channel USB microphone adapter to hook up to my laptop and record my band's rehearsals. I quickly arrived at a preference to get one of the marker pen-shaped interfaces that you can plug your mic into eliminating the need for a mic cable. Out of the obvious suspects on the market the specifications seemed to indicate the MPP offers audio quality superior to the other units so I decided to give it a shot plus I wanted to record stereo so I purchased 2 units.My initial portability demands had been met - I can fit two NT55s incl. stand adapters and the extra capsules, two USB cables (supplied with MPP), and the two MPPs in one standard size mic pouch and put the whole thing into my gig bag's front pocket (I'm a guitar player) - I'm pretty sure this would have been impossible in the 2008 world and it feels fantastic!The units look fairly sturdy. I guess the XLR could be better quality. The circuit board is lodged in the metal body very tight to avoid any parts rumbling inside (read on to see why I had to open the unit up). Knobs are made of rubber, have a soft feel to them and again fit very nicely. The phantom power switch is a low action micro switch that is kind of difficult to get to, which I class as a good thing as long as you don't deactivate it while trying to insert headphones in the 3.5mm stereo jack that's just next to it.Sound quality indeed turned out to be this product's strength. Noise level of both recording and playback is very low, I had no problem with any kind of distortion, hum, hiss... Obviously it's always a question of what is it that you're comparing it to. As far as the built-in sound adapter in most/all laptops I can't even begin to describe the difference. I'm sure there are better laptops in that respect than my Compaq but seriously it would be comparing two different worlds.Reliability - on the first session I noticed that the first unit I tried kept losing signal from the mic while recording. This was magnified when I was moving the mic around and indicated a connection issue between the mic and the MPP. Initially I thought it would be loose XLR contacts on the MPP. Now, live too far and I'm too impatient to send the unit back so being fairly skilled and being an electrical guy I went through the hassle of taking the XLR apart to respring the contacts to later find out the exercise didn't fix the problem. You can imagine the internal PCB is a pretty busy one so I still hoped the lost/unstable connection would be between the small board that the XLR is soldered to and the unit's main board - and it was - I quickly found the main board kept losing connection to pin 3 of the XLR. As the internal electronics uses multi layer circuit boards I was unable to track where the path goes and where it's broken so I just ran a piece of fine wire from the XLR to the main board on which it was obvious enough where it needs to go. No problem from there. The other unit was OK.Next thing was to try both MPPs at the same time to record a stereo track. The Centrance website does make sure their users understand they need to plug both units into the same USB hub to achieve a sample-accurate stereo track so that's what I did (my laptop has two USB ports on either side and I plugged both in one side). In Cool Edit I assigned the inputs to the tracks and pressed rec. After a second or two of the cursor still stuck in one spot a Win error message pops up saying I'm exceeding the USB's bandwidth. This was in a 44.1kHz and 16bit recording session. Out of curiosity, I replugged one unit to one of the USB ports on other side of my laptop reassigned inputs and tried again. This time the recording started successfully and carried on with no apparent problem. After it was done I listened to the tracks and confirmed what Centrance warned about. The two tracks were off from beat one and their offset was getting worse as the track progressed to reach over one second over two and a half minutes. I later even tried to adjust sample rate of one of the tracks to compensate and realized the two clocks were not only different but were very unstable during the course of the track too. So again, Centrance is right, no way to go!I'm currently trying different setups to make the units work in stereo, if I don't I'll be stuck with two MicPortPros both of them for sale as one is obviously not going to give me stereo. I paid $300 for the two units and was ready to take off three stars in this review but I just noticed here that the price has recently dropped to something a lot more reasonable so I'm only taking two stars off.All in all, mono operation is flawless as long as your MPP isn't faulty and sound quality is stunning for what it is. Much worth considering especially now at the new price.

I bought the MicPort Pro (MPP) to build a recording studio for my wife. My first recommendation is to install the CEntrance Universal Driver on you Window PC prior to connecting the MPP to your system. Why? You might lose audio playback devices on your system. After installing the driver connect the MPP to a USB port on your system. All playback and recording device showed up correctly in device manager.I connected the MPP to a RODE condenser mic and Sennheiser HD-280 headphones. I have never heard a mic sound as good! It is incredible. We are using Audacity 1.3.14 beta for recording and it works great. The CEntrance devices show up and can be selected in Audacity. So far, everything is working wonderfully well.One downside that has been mentioned in other reviews is not having a lock on the XLR connector. It would have been nice if the plastic ring allowed locking a mating XLR male connector to the MPP. I did notice any disconnection of the microphone signals to the MPP. I think this can be managed by careful cable management. That is, be careful to set the MPP on a desktop without allowing the mic cable to pull it off. Gaffers tape might help you lock down the cable to the desk (don't ever use duct tape for anything). If you use a preamp for the microphone, this will help stabilize the setup. It will require a little cable management, but a good exercise to make a quality recording setup.Overall, the MPP is easy to use if you first correctly set up the software.

I am a professional voice-over talent and bought the MicPort Pro so I could record on the road through a USB cable plugged into a laptop. I did an A/B comparison of the MicPort Pro with my studio preamp, a FocusRite Saffire LE with a firewire output. Both were connected to the same Blue Bird mic.  Blue Microphones Bluebird Cardioid Condenser Microphone No, it isn't as good as the FocusRite pre, but it's REALLY close. I have a deep, warm voice, and the MicPort Pro is just a tad thinner/less warm on the bottom end. But otherwise, the sound is clean and clear and does not sound amateurish or cheap at all . The slight difference is most noticeable on high resolution monitors, but less so on computer speakers or a set of MDR-7506 headphones. I did not have the problems with the XLR connector that others have mentioned here, and have absolutely no qualms about taking it on the road and using it to submit auditions and finished projects to clients, or using it as a backup if something went wrong with my FocusRite.

I bought the CEntrance MicPort Pro to record my acoustic guitar. While I wasn't able to that right out of the box - it didn't take long to achieve. My Martin guitar has a port to plug it in and amp it - so I wanted to record my guitar through that system. I had to get an adapter that went from 1/4 to XLR male then I hooked it up. I plugged it into Garage Band on my Mac Pro and it was smooth sailing. Clear clean sound - the MicPort works well. - Now I can hook a mic up to it as well and record vocals as well.

I bought this for my home recording studio and I must say it is pure genius! I had heard before that having a USB Mic was not all good cause a lot was lost by recording directly in digital.. so I decided to take the long way home and buy an analog condenser mic in order to capture the sound neatly with quality, and then transform the analog info to digital with this MicPort Pro... and it is the best!All my sound tech friends at top audio studios saw it and loved it! many have purchased it too for their home studios...5 thumbs up!It has a headphone entrance so you can plug your headies and hear what you are recording directly... it also has a volume so you can control how much the mic picks up, and it has a phantom power button for mics that require it (like mine)... make sure to turn that on!Totally worth it!